New to this site… Have studied very little about logic and philosophy starting with some big famous papers that talk about how we know nothing for certain (thanks, Descartes), going through whether All Ravens are Black, studying the Perfect Island argument, learning about Famine, Affluence, and Morality, and ending somewhere along the lines of whether justified true belief is knowledge. That is to say, I’m not that educated on logic or rationality, but entertaining ideas is a great hobby of mine. I came to Less Wrong because I found it on Harry Potter MOR (I haven’t read HPMOR, or HP for that matter, but I find both interesting nonetheless, and I just got really excited when I found that a site like this existed.). My beliefs: I am a theist, and I do not affiliate with a religion or political party. Of course, that is to say, the mark of an educated mind is to be able to entertain ideas without fully accepting them. :) I also like to assume that the majority of the population is evil and has ulterior motives, but that’s just me…
I’m a high school student who’s just looking for something to write about and something to learn about. Just a new perspective altogether. Nice to be here.
There seems to be a lot of other high school students on this site lately. If you like this stuff, you may also like the International Baccalaureate class Theory of Knowledge, which you can often take as an elective even if you’re not an IB student.
Kind of curious about your theism, don’t feel required to answer: A lot of nonreligious people who believe in a god are deists or pantheists. Are you either of those? If not, would you be willing to give more detail about your beliefs?
Also, I’m kind of starting to wonder if some people don’t really like classifying themselves into groups. Is the reason you don’t affiliate with a political party because you want one that better matches your positions on policy, or because you wouldn’t associate with one even if you agreed with them on all policy proposals?
Most people define “evil” as “wants evil things”, not “has evil revealed preferences”. If you’re looking at social behavior, we all have ulterior motives (I want to talk about things regardless of how annoyed a listener is, I want a strong support structure so that if something goes wrong I can get help, I want people to entertain me), but the actions those motives lead to are pretty low on the scale of bad stuff, somewhere close to EY’s dust speck.
There seems to be a lot of other high school students on this site lately. If you like this stuff, you may also like the International Baccalaureate class Theory of Knowledge, which you can often take as an elective even if you’re not an IB student.
As a 2001 IB Diploma Graduate, I have to disagree very strongly with this advice (unless the curriculum for the Theory of Knowledge course has changed substantially over the last 15 years).
I remember taking this course and being immensely frustrated by how almost every discussion was obviously just disagreement about semantics. This completely killed my interest in epistemology and philosophy, it was only when I read the “Human’s Guide to Words” sequence several years later that I realized there were people who were thinking seriously about these issues without getting into pointless discussions about whether items are rubes or bleggs.
Courses in mainstream philosophy that get stuck on confusion about the meaning of words have the effect of turning rigorous thinkers away from thinking about philosophical questions. As for myself, if it hadn’t been for reading Overcoming Bias years later, the IB course on Theory of Knowledge could have permanently killed my interest in epistemology.
It’s been better than that so far (first few weeks). We haven’t argued much over meanings of things yet.
The one disappointment is that I get really defensive every time we discuss whether doing whatever empathy tells you to do is moral, because that’s half of the argument that says autistics are evil mass murderers (not actually the position of anyone in the class), and I get mildly annoyed when people mischaracterize utilitarianism or have clearly never heard of it before. (The situation in which all the available options are rule-violating and you choose the utility-maximizing one is different from the situation in which all the high-utility options are rule-violating, and you violate the rules and then choose a low-utility action.)
See as far as my beliefs, I have a strong religious background… Catholic elementary and middle school (I go to non-sectional, public high school now), Hindu dad, Protestant (Lutheran) mom… I mean, I generally end up changing my mind every year or so, but right now, I believe that God exists as the Universe working within itself… and that as each of us live, we each experience God… I don’t know, I can’t seem to get my head wrapped around the idea of a nonexistent god because of my strong religious background. Not very “rational”, I guess, but that’s just me personally, and there’s really no should or shouldn’t as far as faith goes, so I’ve just been rolling with it. So, I sort of just been changing my perspective based on what I learn and hear about the world. I don’t know if that really affiliates with deism or pantheism, really, but if what I explained above affiliates with one of them, would you (or anyone) explain how?
And as far as political parties go, there was this time when I tried to identify myself as Republican (though I really would be more of a Conservative Democrat) because I was tired of saying “No affiliation.” It also kind of seemed like a fun little experiment because then I would be going against pretty much everyone else (most of the people I know tend to be democrat). I couldn’t really hold out that long because, I don’t know, being affiliated with Republican—or Democrat for that matter—makes people regard you as some political freak and not merely a person just agreeing with one more. Another thing, when I found myself affiliating with Republican, I found that I began to care more about what party supports what position, and I feel like that’s something that just shouldn’t matter. In the end, I’m also somewhat ignorant and not very confident about my positions just yet either.
And as far as ulterior motives, saying that I don’t trust people could be seen as my ulterior motive to not have to be generous and charitable (it’s a pretty lame excuse to not empathize with charities sometimes.).
“Pantheism is the belief that the universe (or nature as the totality of everything) is identical with divinity, or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent God. Pantheists thus do not believe in a distinct personal or anthropomorphic god” (Wikipedia).
That matches to my interpretation of your stated beliefs.
I believe that God exists as the Universe working within itself… and that as each of us live, we each experience God.
Most of the atheism stuff on this site has more to do with a god that is a discrete being with supernatural capabilities than the thing you describe. However, if the main reason that you’re not an atheist is that you have trouble picturing a godless universe, and you change beliefs based on what you learn and hear about the world (good work, by the way), chances are good that you’ll end up being an atheist if you spend enough time on this site. ;)
If you actually want to clarify your beliefs, it could help to imagine some different worlds and see whether they count as having God in them or not, in order to consider what constitutes the absence of God. If there’s no scenario that counts as God not existing, then I’m not sure what your belief that “God exists” is supposed to represent, and what information about the world someone could derive from that belief, given that it was true.
Thanks so much for the data about party affiliation!
Also, if you count subconscious desires to act in one’s own interest as “ulterior motives”, you may like what Robin Hanson on Overcoming Bias has to say about signaling.
Welcome! I just want to comment on the “everyone is evil” idea—“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Or broken incentive systems. Or something in that vein. :p
New to this site… Have studied very little about logic and philosophy starting with some big famous papers that talk about how we know nothing for certain (thanks, Descartes), going through whether All Ravens are Black, studying the Perfect Island argument, learning about Famine, Affluence, and Morality, and ending somewhere along the lines of whether justified true belief is knowledge. That is to say, I’m not that educated on logic or rationality, but entertaining ideas is a great hobby of mine.
I came to Less Wrong because I found it on Harry Potter MOR (I haven’t read HPMOR, or HP for that matter, but I find both interesting nonetheless, and I just got really excited when I found that a site like this existed.).
My beliefs: I am a theist, and I do not affiliate with a religion or political party. Of course, that is to say, the mark of an educated mind is to be able to entertain ideas without fully accepting them. :) I also like to assume that the majority of the population is evil and has ulterior motives, but that’s just me… I’m a high school student who’s just looking for something to write about and something to learn about. Just a new perspective altogether.
Nice to be here.
There seems to be a lot of other high school students on this site lately. If you like this stuff, you may also like the International Baccalaureate class Theory of Knowledge, which you can often take as an elective even if you’re not an IB student.
Kind of curious about your theism, don’t feel required to answer: A lot of nonreligious people who believe in a god are deists or pantheists. Are you either of those? If not, would you be willing to give more detail about your beliefs?
Also, I’m kind of starting to wonder if some people don’t really like classifying themselves into groups. Is the reason you don’t affiliate with a political party because you want one that better matches your positions on policy, or because you wouldn’t associate with one even if you agreed with them on all policy proposals?
Most people define “evil” as “wants evil things”, not “has evil revealed preferences”. If you’re looking at social behavior, we all have ulterior motives (I want to talk about things regardless of how annoyed a listener is, I want a strong support structure so that if something goes wrong I can get help, I want people to entertain me), but the actions those motives lead to are pretty low on the scale of bad stuff, somewhere close to EY’s dust speck.
As a 2001 IB Diploma Graduate, I have to disagree very strongly with this advice (unless the curriculum for the Theory of Knowledge course has changed substantially over the last 15 years).
I remember taking this course and being immensely frustrated by how almost every discussion was obviously just disagreement about semantics. This completely killed my interest in epistemology and philosophy, it was only when I read the “Human’s Guide to Words” sequence several years later that I realized there were people who were thinking seriously about these issues without getting into pointless discussions about whether items are rubes or bleggs.
Courses in mainstream philosophy that get stuck on confusion about the meaning of words have the effect of turning rigorous thinkers away from thinking about philosophical questions. As for myself, if it hadn’t been for reading Overcoming Bias years later, the IB course on Theory of Knowledge could have permanently killed my interest in epistemology.
It’s been better than that so far (first few weeks). We haven’t argued much over meanings of things yet.
The one disappointment is that I get really defensive every time we discuss whether doing whatever empathy tells you to do is moral, because that’s half of the argument that says autistics are evil mass murderers (not actually the position of anyone in the class), and I get mildly annoyed when people mischaracterize utilitarianism or have clearly never heard of it before. (The situation in which all the available options are rule-violating and you choose the utility-maximizing one is different from the situation in which all the high-utility options are rule-violating, and you violate the rules and then choose a low-utility action.)
I don’t like classifying myself into groups. You try to crawl into a pigeonhole and you get scrapes and bruises, and sometimes things get torn off...
See as far as my beliefs, I have a strong religious background… Catholic elementary and middle school (I go to non-sectional, public high school now), Hindu dad, Protestant (Lutheran) mom… I mean, I generally end up changing my mind every year or so, but right now, I believe that God exists as the Universe working within itself… and that as each of us live, we each experience God… I don’t know, I can’t seem to get my head wrapped around the idea of a nonexistent god because of my strong religious background. Not very “rational”, I guess, but that’s just me personally, and there’s really no should or shouldn’t as far as faith goes, so I’ve just been rolling with it. So, I sort of just been changing my perspective based on what I learn and hear about the world.
I don’t know if that really affiliates with deism or pantheism, really, but if what I explained above affiliates with one of them, would you (or anyone) explain how?
And as far as political parties go, there was this time when I tried to identify myself as Republican (though I really would be more of a Conservative Democrat) because I was tired of saying “No affiliation.” It also kind of seemed like a fun little experiment because then I would be going against pretty much everyone else (most of the people I know tend to be democrat). I couldn’t really hold out that long because, I don’t know, being affiliated with Republican—or Democrat for that matter—makes people regard you as some political freak and not merely a person just agreeing with one more. Another thing, when I found myself affiliating with Republican, I found that I began to care more about what party supports what position, and I feel like that’s something that just shouldn’t matter.
In the end, I’m also somewhat ignorant and not very confident about my positions just yet either.
And as far as ulterior motives, saying that I don’t trust people could be seen as my ulterior motive to not have to be generous and charitable (it’s a pretty lame excuse to not empathize with charities sometimes.).
That matches to my interpretation of your stated beliefs.
Most of the atheism stuff on this site has more to do with a god that is a discrete being with supernatural capabilities than the thing you describe. However, if the main reason that you’re not an atheist is that you have trouble picturing a godless universe, and you change beliefs based on what you learn and hear about the world (good work, by the way), chances are good that you’ll end up being an atheist if you spend enough time on this site. ;)
If you actually want to clarify your beliefs, it could help to imagine some different worlds and see whether they count as having God in them or not, in order to consider what constitutes the absence of God. If there’s no scenario that counts as God not existing, then I’m not sure what your belief that “God exists” is supposed to represent, and what information about the world someone could derive from that belief, given that it was true.
Thanks so much for the data about party affiliation!
Also, if you count subconscious desires to act in one’s own interest as “ulterior motives”, you may like what Robin Hanson on Overcoming Bias has to say about signaling.
Welcome! I just want to comment on the “everyone is evil” idea—“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Or broken incentive systems. Or something in that vein. :p